Experts say car owners claiming faulty manufacturing would be left high and dry after GM and Chrysler go bankrupt.

Bankruptcies by General Motors and Chrysler will take the companies largely off the hook for billions in legal claims by car owners who say they were victims of GM's poor manufacturing, according to experts and company executives.

For years, Chrysler company has faced claims that some of its Jeeps went into reverse even after they were put into park.

Hundreds of other accident victims suing Chrysler for a variety of alleged defects learned this week they are out of luck.

A judge has ruled that post-bankruptcy Chrysler will not have any liability for past problems.

Rasmussen Reports also shows that only 26% of Americans believe the GM bailout was a good idea.

One wonders what the rating for Obama would be without the media constantly publicizing and glorifying his every move culminating in the recent two-day love fest with Brian Williams (shown above bowing to Obama when it was over).

Michael Johnson and others took a break in the middle of New York’s Times Square Monday after the street was closed off to cars in an effort to reduce traffic and pollution and curb pedestrian accidents.

A Washington Times report speculates that Republicans plan to use the government takeover of General Motors Corp. as ammunition in their bid to defeat congressional Democrats next year.

It will probably work as evidenced by the apparent dislike of government intrusion into the business world by a large number of Americans.

Republicans plan to use the government takeover of General Motors Corp. as ammunition in their bid to defeat congressional Democrats next year, saying its a glaring example of big government intrusion into the marketplace that will rankle average voters.

They said the bankruptcy arrangement, which President Obama announced at the White House on Monday, is doomed to entangle politicians in business decisions that are outside their expertise.

More importantly, voters understand that politicians are making business decisions that are beyond their authority.

Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for House Republicans' campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee said, "Having to defend such drastic government intervention paid for with reckless spending and bailouts is not an enviable position for many of these Democrats to be in next year."

Many Americans will say, ''There goes some of my tax money'' when they see a new GM vehicle driving down the road.

Others will say, “first I had to pay my neighbor's mortgage. Now I get to pay for his car as well.”Link

Jun 4, 2009

What would happen if American journalists started being critical of Obama instead of bowing at his feet? Will lèse majesté come into play as it has in other countries?

Lèse majesté is an offence against the dignity of a monarch or other head of state. It differs from outright censorship in that it is often presented as libel, or as a personal offense against a head of State, rather than as a pure free speech issue.

It is often used to silence those who express an “inconvenient truth” against a head of state.

Regular citizens as well as reporters can be prosecuted for this crime.

To avoid the stigma of censorship, some governments have chosen to prosecute reporters under lèse majesté rather than under press reporting laws.

American actor David Carradine (pictured) was found dead in his hotel in Bankok, Thailand.

A news report said he was found hanged in his hotel room and was believed to have committed suicide.

Carradine was the star of the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu" who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies. Carradine, along with his brother Keith Carradine, hosted the Wild West Tech series on The History Channel.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy confirmed the death of the 72-year-old actor. He said the embassy was informed by Thai authorities that Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he could not provide further details out of consideration for his family.

Mr. Carradine was in Bangkok to shoot a movie and had been staying at the luxury Swissotel Nai Lert Park hotel since Tuesday.

Jun 3, 2009

Maybe I should buy this guy a few meals and have him help me code some pages for this blog. I’d probably get him some clean clothes and insist he take a shower first.

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, which is the major language of the Internet's World Wide Web and is widely used to make web pages. HTML code allows the use of text, pictures, sounds and links. It can also allow the use of scripting such as Java.

The following is how this page looks like in HTML code. There are extra spaces separating the tags (angle brackets) or the HTML code would be invisible when viewed in a browser (for simplicity, the code below is without the document type, heading or body tags):

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

< center>< a href=http://geocities.com/perry_peterson_1999//begsign3.jpg>< img src=http://geocities.com/perry_peterson_1999/begsign3-sm.jpg border=0>< /a>< /center>< center>(< strong>click on picture to enlarge< /strong>)< /center>< p>Maybe I should buy this guy a few meals and have him help me code some pages for this blog. I’d probably get him some clean clothes and insist he take a shower first.< p>HTML stands for < strong>< em>HyperText Markup Language< /em>< /strong>, which is the major language of the Internet's World Wide Web and is widely used to make web pages. HTML code allows the use of text, pictures, sounds and links. It can also allow the use of scripting such as Java.< p>The following is how this page looks like in HTML code. There are extra spaces separating the tags (angle brackets) or the HTML code would be invisible when viewed in a browser (for simplicity, the code below is without the document type, heading or body tags):

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Purists would leave more space between components for ease of debugging. I don’t worry about being sloppy because the way I use HTML, it’s really not difficult even though it sometimes drives me nuts trying to find that unclosed tag (or whatever is wrong) in a multi-page document - this is just a couple of paragraphs.

First it was Nintendo thumb. The newest affliction of the wired age is cell phone elbow.

As computers became more prevalent in our daily lives, doctors saw more instances of carpal tunnel syndrome. Now they're seeing more cases of cubital tunnel syndrome, otherwise known as "cell phone elbow."

Cell phone elbow is caused by prolonged flexing of the elbow during long phone conversations. The ulnar nerve -- the same one responsible for that tingling feeling you get from hitting your funny bone -- is compressed, causing numbness down the forearm and hand.

This is a case for hands-free headsets (pictured).

If it was caused by using a cell phone in a car would it be called “carpool tunnel syndrome?...did I really say that?..sorry.

Almost on a daily basis the media shows some announcement by his office or an interview or speech by Mr. Obama.

As one Lucianne commenter wrote:

One can hardly turn on the TV without Obama’a face coming at you & a breathless reporter giving you all the details.

The press makes little effort to maintain neutrality thereby losing what little credibility they once had. They are quickly becoming little more than shills for Barack Obama.

However, many of them may be out of work soon as the White House is beginning to do its own media coverage of Mr. Obama.

As reported at the link below, the Obama White House has begun covering its own stories complete with cuts, interviews and chyrons identifying who's speaking, etc.

This is just the evolution of a president making the leap from controlling or producing the message on the campaign trail to taking those methods to the White House, says Villanova University political scientist Lara Brown.

A president usually can’t hide or stage the news forever because the public starts to wonder why he isn’t answering difficult questions or is always posing as an action-hero, says Villanova’s Brown.

The Obama administration is fostering an illusion that (it is) accessible to the public and that his presidency is more transparent than any in history,” she warns.

So far, Obama has found a way to do both things – control the message and appear accessible – which, in effect, has helped to put the Washington media out of business.

Auto company nationalization is just one part of the Obama socialist movement. The banking industry is well on the way to nationalization with the health industry just waiting in the wings.

However, it may be the American auto industry nationalization that may be Obama’s tipping point.

Observers across the political spectrum have marveled at Barack Obama's ability to maintain a high job approval rating even as the public grows skeptical about some of his key policy initiatives.

There's a feeling, among Republicans at least, that sooner or later he’s going to reach a tipping point between his personal popularity and the unpopularity of his proposals, and that his job approval rating will suffer.

That moment will come when Obama has to actually stand behind specific proposals -- when he has to put his name on a health care plan that will lead to the rationing of medical treatment, or an energy plan that will lead to significantly higher electrical bills.

The report at the link below suggests that we might be catching a glimpse of Obama’s tipping point with his handling of General Motors' bankruptcy.

The government takeover of the automakers is by far the most unpopular thing Obama has done so far. And it's not just unpopular -- it is partisan, appealing to the base of his party and virtually no one else.

In a Washington Post poll in late April, just 41 percent of those surveyed approved of Obama's handling of the automaker problem.

This was a poll that hardly anyone saw because the partisan media chose not to broadly report the story.

The poll showed that people of all age groups disapproved.

People in every region of the country disapproved.

Men disapproved.

Women disapproved.

People with graduate degrees disapproved.

People with less than a high school degree disapproved.

People who go to church a lot disapproved.

People who don't go to church at all disapproved.

People who make more than $75,000 a year disapproved.

People who make less than $20,000 a year disapproved.

Among Republicans, 72 percent disapproved. Sixty-six percent of independents -- a group key to Obama's success -- disapproved. The only group to approve of continued bailouts to the automakers was Democrats, by 57 percent to 42 percent. On the auto issue, at least, Obama is playing to his party base and little else.

When the public learns just how much the GM bankruptcy favors the United Auto Workers Union at the expense of GM bondholders (the shareholders are already holding worthless stock) the tipping point will have been reached.

Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment; but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.

(click on cartoon to enlarge)

Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means.

Even Stalin couldn't have wished for a more adoring press corps!

Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows.

The study found that Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.

The study examined 1,261 stores by The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the "NewsHour" on PBS.

Favorable stories (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent) , while the rest were "neutral" or "mixed."

Obama's treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the presidencies of Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent).

More on the story of the media infatuation with Obama can be found here.

Jun 1, 2009

An Air France plane is feared to have crashed in the Atlantic with 228 people aboard reported electrical problems in stormy weather before it lost contact.

Officials said the Airbus A330-200 sent automated messages of electrical failure and pressure loss as it hit turbulence, vanishing from the radar early in its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

Brazil and France have scrambled search and rescue aircraft on both sides of the Atlantic, but with a vast area to scour, there were dwindling hopes of finding survivors.

The loss of a relatively new model of one of the aviation sector's most reliable and state-of-the-art aircraft has stunned analysts who say it would take extremely violent weather to bring down such a large jet.

Former Airbus pilot John Wiley told CNN that speculation lightning had brought down the plane was likely to prove unfounded since most modern passenger aircraft were capable of withstanding direct strikes.

May 31, 2009

They went through the 100 Years' War, the Seven Years' War. And then came the Napoleonic Wars from 1799 to 1815.

The current battle may be no more than a hissy fit but the Queen of England (upper photo) ain’t happy!

British media reporters are even less happy!

France did not invite Queen Elizabeth II to attend June 6 ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings -- and Britain's press is in a snit.

'Nicolas Sarkozy (lower photo) in D-Day Snub to Queen,' says a headline in The Sun. 'Palace in Fury as Sarkozy Refuses to Invite Royals to 65 Anniversary,' proclaims another, in the Daily Mail.

The D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, marked the start of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has invited U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to attend the anniversary ceremonies.

It may be the last time that large numbers of World War II veterans travel to France to mark the event.

Queen Elizabeth II was left out - no invitation.

The irony is that the Queen of England is the only Royal or head of state still living that was directly involved in World War II.

As a teenager, the then Princess Elizabeth, drove an army truck part-time pto assist the ‘home front’ and rode out the blitz at night in a bomb shelter under Buckingham Palace. It seems unconscionable that she has been left out of the ceremony.

A race baiting statement by Barack Obama’s high court nominee has the administration in damage control.

In 2001 Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (pictured) said that a female Hispanic judge would often reach a better decision than a white male judge.

The Obama administration is scrambling to make the best of what would have been a disastrous situation had the comment been made by a high court nominee of a Republican President.

Mr. Obama tried to put words in Ms. Sotomayor’s mouth on Friday:

"I'm sure she would have restated it," Obama flatly told NBC News, without indicating how he knew that.

The quote in question from Sotomayor has emerged as a rallying call for conservative critics who fear she will offer opinions from the bench based less on the rule of law and more on her life experience, ethnicity and gender. That issue is likely to play a central role in her Senate confirmation process.

Chairman of the Czech Republic's Social Democrats (CSSD) Jiri Paroubek reacts after being pelted with eggs by onlookers during a rally for the European Parliament elections, in Prague,Wednesday, May 27.

The European parliament is facing elections across the bloc's 27 members in early June.